Jamie Foxx cannot catch a break.
After he was hospitalized earlier this year due to an unspecified illness, Foxx is now battling a different enemy: online conspiracy theories. A.J. Benza, a podcaster and former New York Daily News contributor who you might also remember from frequent appearances on E! News in the 1990s, was on the online talk show “Ask Dr. Drew,” who claimed that the actor was left “partially paralyzed and blind” after getting a COVID vaccine. Foxx’s representatives told NBC News the claim is “completely inaccurate.”
Benza said that after Foxx got the vaccine while on set (although he didn’t cite the movie, it was presumably “Back in Action,” the Netflix feature he was shooting with Cameron Diaz at the time of his medical emergency) and formed a blood clot, which led to a stroke. Benza claimed that this information came from a source close to the actor and Dr. Drew Pinsky, the former “Loveline” host who has been embroiled in a series of controversies over the past few years (including downplaying the severity of the pandemic in the early days of the outbreak), said nothing to refute Benza’s objectively outrageous claim.
And, like most horrible things unleashed on the internet, it quickly caught fire, with conservative firebrands sharing Benza’s claims – among them Candace Owens (who talked about the claim on her YouTube channel) and Kevin Sorbo, who shared an article on his Twitter account and said “I can’t imagine how many Americans are dealing with similar problems and the MSM [mainstream media] hardly bats an eye.”
On May 12 Foxx’s daughter Corinne shared a message that said “My Dad has been out of the hospital for weeks, recuperating,” and claimed that he was playing pickleball last week.
